


Fair Game

by Elizabeth Tudor (Liz_Tudor)



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Attempted heist, Bombing, Cowboy Jigen, Explosion, Gen, Head trauma, Jigen is a good bro, Lupin whump, Seriously don't hurt Lupin if you don't want Jigen to kill you, Zenigata just wants justice, terrorist attack, warning for vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz_Tudor/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Tudor
Summary: When a heist goes south and Lupin gets caught in a bombing, Zenigata finds himself playing the role of unwilling guardian angel, and finds that desperate times can make and break strange alliances.Featuring a pissed off and protective Jigen, and a couple of OCs who will likely not be seen again.





	Fair Game

Inspector Koichi Zenigata was almost beside himself with glee. He finally had Lupin the third, chained up and in police custody! True, the satisfaction was tempered with fury and fear at the circumstances surrounding the arrest; concern about the sheer amount of rubble he'd had to pull off the thief; exhaustion, exasperation at being stuck in this nowhere town. It was a complicated mix of emotions. But glee was definitely in there, _somewhere_ , the satisfaction of a long chase finally drawing to a close.

 

Now if only the kid would wake up so he could gloat, make sure he was okay, and then go back out to help search the rubble for victims.

 

If only the kid would wake up.

 

Concern was winning out.

 

Through the interrogation room's open door, he could see the two officers left behind tonight on desk duty while everyone else went running for the explosion site. Both were peering around the door, not even trying to be discreet, and he felt a flicker of annoyance. This was a small town, and this was certainly the first they'd ever been in the same room as a criminal from Interpol's most wanted list, but he expected a little more professionalism. They were rubbernecking like tourists.

 

"That's Lupin the third?" he heard one of them mutter, staring at the motionless and seated figure. Suarez! That was the man's name, Officer Suarez. "Doesn't look like much."

 

His irritation peaked, and then disappeared just as quickly when the still figure at the table finally showed some signs of life.

 

Lupin came awake slowly, ghost images and screams flickering across his face and making it hard to focus - or to tell whether his eyes were open or closed. His muscles shook with the effort of raising his head, and the room around him kept strobe-lighting into white with the pulse of his heartbeat, so that figures flickered in and out. Zenigata was across the table, then a pulse of white later, he had a hand on Lupin's shoulder, keeping him upright.

 

"Shit," the thief heard, in a rumble like distant thunder. "I'm pretty sure you've got a concussion, kid." A horrifically white light, painful and burning, was suddenly needling its way into his eyes, and he hissed and pulled away as much as the rough, work-calloused hand on his shoulder would allow him.

 

"Definitely a concussion," the rumble sighed, and the raw, throbbing light disappeared, leaving only the torturous pounding in his own head.

 

"Pops? Wha h'ppnd?" The words came out garbled. He couldn't feel his lips, his tongue was leaden, and it felt like he was speaking around a mouthful of cotton balls. Amazingly, the inspector understood.

 

"Bomb went off." Zenigata sounded grim. "You made it out of the museum, but then the museum collapsed on you." And sweet mercy of Kanon but if that hadn't been a frightening moment. He'd seen the skinny thief in the midst of the screaming crowd, pelting away after the first explosion went off, dark eyes wide with fear, expression clearing as he thought he'd made it to safety, twisting almost into a smile...and then the facade had come down, unable to support itself as the guts of the building were ripped away, and Lupin had been swallowed in a concussive blast of dust and crunching marble and shattered stones the size of suitcases. He'd been amazingly lucky, had managed to dive into the well of one of the enormous old thick-silled Spanish windows as it crashed down over his head, and it had kept him mostly in one piece. Mostly. When Zenigata and the rest of the rescuers had reached him, it was to find the thief still unconscious and his leg from the shin down smashed under that thick marble windowsill.

 

"That 'splains why I feel like som'one stuck me in a blender," Lupin muttered, pushing back against the rising nausea and trying to force his thoughts into order. "Why's my leg feel like it got r'placed wi' roadkill?"

 

"Broken. Badly. Who all was with you? Fujiko? The samurai?"

 

"No, no G'mon," Lupin gritted out, trying to force his fuzzy, saturated brain to take the information in and assemble it into a usable picture. The Museo, that was right. An unexpectedly good museum for a town this small. They'd been commissioned to steal two paintings, and there was a third he'd wanted for himself. "Small job, so jus' us. Me an'..." Sodding hell, why couldn't he remember? The images and words darted past him, quicksilver as minnows, but his sodden brain couldn't catch them or make sense of them, and he was left splashing fruitlessly at the space where the meaning had been. The painting...it had been of a red-haired woman who'd looked a bit like Fujiko, if you squinted. The security was stupidly easy, he remembered his disdain and glee easily enough when he'd seen the archaic camera system, the museum in a small town that had been unprepared to guard the treasures they'd been entrusted with. They'd just waited until the night of a gala fundraiser (swirling silk, Spanish violins, glasses of not very good white wine, the delicious bubbling electric feeling of anticipation, waiting for just the right moment), mingling with the bluebloods until they had a chance to sneak off and peel the canvases off the walls. He'd wanted to steal the painting to give to Fujiko, which _he_ thought was stupid, Lupin had had to talk him into coming along for that bit, but he couldn't pull this job off without...

 

"Jigen!" he shouted, jerking upright, then groaned as the motion stabbed at the lights lancing through his skull and popping like cherry bombs behind his eyelids.

 

"Alive," Zenigata reassured him, then amended, "Well, we think so, anyway. He wasn't spotted near the bomb site, and we haven't found anyone matching his description, which hopefully means he wasn't caught in the blast."

 

"Than' god," the kid sighed, setting his forehead back on his chained hands. Zenigata heard him muttering what sounded like a prayer, directed to any god who might take a passing interest in his sorry soul.

 

"Kid, I do have to ask...that wasn't you, right?"

 

Lupin squinted at him. "Don't be st'pd, Pops," he muttered, trying to force his eyes to focus properly. "I steal, I don'kill. 'Splosions that big destroy anything worth stealing an' scare off the pretty girls. Why'd I wanna blow it up?"

 

"I figured," Zenigata sighed. "They'll try to pin this on you anyway, since you were there. Once I finish checking you over, I'll go back and see if there's anything to tell us who really did this."

 

"Tha' makes no sense," Lupin sighed, giving up the battle to keep his eyes open. His head was simultaneously numb and prickling with heat, and it throbbed like a bruise. Everything was swaying, tilting sickly around him, and it was making him nauseous. Maybe if he couldn't see it, it would be better.

 

"Kid, even if your MO was stealing teddy bears to give to orphans, they'd try to pin this on you. You're Interpol's most wanted, arrested at the scene of the crime. It just looks bad."

 

"Just great," he groaned. He could taste bile at the back of his throat, not sure whether it was a physical or psychological reaction.

 

"Look, even before I asked, I knew damn well it wasn't you. It doesn't fit your profile at all. That means I have to find the real bomber. Besides, if you _had_ decided to start destroying public buildings for fun, I _assume_ you'd have the fucking common sense not to be in them when they went off."

 

"Thanks for that, Pops," he muttered, and then jerked, face as green as the badly burned remains of his jacket, struggling not to puke on himself. Ever quick on the uptake, Zenigata shoved the plastic wastepaper basket into his hands, and he gratefully buried his head in it, thin shoulders shaking as his stomach emptied itself of what little bit he'd eaten that night.

 

"Could you get some water?" Lupin groaned, resurfacing. "The puke taste is just makin' it worse."

 

The inspector nodded silently, and left the interrogation room, the two call officers falling into step behind him.

 

"He has to be lying," the other one, Martín, declared immediately, trailing him like a yapping dog. "He's there, it all fits. You're telling him you believe him to get him to confess, right?"

 

"I have my doubts about Lupin blowing up that building," Zenigata said heavily, checking doors until he found the break room and the water cooler. "And if he didn't, we'd be letting the real terrorists walk free if we pinned it on him without due diligence."

 

"But what else would an internationally wanted criminal be doing there? That's one hell of a coincidence."

 

"He's an unholy terror, but he's not a terrorist," Zenigata said flatly. "He's also much too smart to try and rob a building and let it blow up while he's still inside it." _And one hell of a coincidence is pretty par for the course when it comes to Lupin and his gang._

 

"Unless he just wants us to think that! It'd be the perfect cover!"

 

"That's...not how this works," the inspector sighed, checking a cabinet. He was far too consummate a professional to add, 'you idiot,' but he couldn't quite stop himself from thinking it.

 

"He calls you Pops?" Suarez sounded amused.

 

"We've been doing this awhile," Zenigata deadpanned, heading back to the interrogation room with what he'd found.

 

The thief hadn't moved an inch from where Zenigata had left him, and the policeman was sure it wasn't just the heavy-duty cuffs that were locked around his wrists. That had never stopped him before. The concussion and his shattered leg were far better restraints than any shackles. His shoulders were still spasming periodically as his body tried to rid itself of the nausea by throwing up, despite having nothing left in his stomach to get rid of.

 

"Can't think straight," Lupin muttered. "Didja get that water?" He didn't actually think that the water would help much, but it was something, anything, to change, to try and escape from the unbearable pressure clenched like a vice around his skull.

 

"And why should we help a terrorist?" Martín sneered. "We should give you the same chance you gave everyone in that building."

 

"Don't be stupid," Lupin groaned, clutching his forehead, eyes screwed shut against the light. The pounding was getting worse. "m' a thief, not a ter'rist."

 

"Are you calling me stupid?!"

 

"Only if you're _being_ stupid," the thief gritted out, panting as another wave of nausea hit his empty stomach. "God, I feel like shit."

 

Silently, Zenigata elbowed Martín aside and placed a blueberry muffin, an unwrapped granola bar, two Tylenol, and a paper cup of water in front of him.

 

"nks," Lupin managed. Reaching out with his cuffed hands, he broke off a piece of the muffin's cap, and managed to nibble away about two bites of it. They only stayed there for a minute though.

 

"Drink the water, at least," the inspector demanded, once he'd stopped dry-heaving. "You're already dehydrated. Don't try for the painkillers until you think you can keep them down, that'll hurt too much, coming back up."

 

"Kay," Lupin whispered, lifting the little paper cup in both hands to keep it from shaking. The blurry-white room kept swaying like the deck of a ship, but he didn't dare leave his eyes shut, with those two standing between him and his inspector.

 

After Lupin managed to keep down most of the cup's contents, the next priority was to assess the extent of his injuries. If he was wounded badly enough to need medical attention immediately, Zenigata couldn't in good conscience leave him there, he'd have to find a way of getting him to a hospital, even if it meant calling a cab. He wished, badly, that he had some backup other than these two clowns, but that was what he got for refusing to take a vacation.

 

"This is going to hurt," Zenigata warned the kid, "but I need to get your shoe off, see how badly your leg is injured." Lupin just nodded mutely. He looked exhausted. Zenigata steeled himself, then crouched down and began unlacing the dress shoe as wide as it would go, trusting the thief not to kick him in the face. The marble windowsill had crushed both the shoe and the foot inside it; the scratched-up leather loafer at the end of his leg had the wrong shape, and no matter how careful he was, this was still going to hurt like hell.

 

"Plastic 'xplosives in the heel," Lupin muttered, focusing all of his efforts on not throwing up. He didn't particularly want to barf straight down Zenigata's back, not when the officer was being nice to him. "Be careful."

 

"Dammit, Lupin," Zenigata grumbled, easing the damaged shoe off as gently as he could and tossing it to the side. "I'm going to have to take the other one too then."

 

"Fuse is in that one," the thief mumbled, managing a shaky grin. "Could prob'ly leave it."

 

"Not a chance," the inspector told him firmly, removing the other shoe and tossing it with the first. "I know just how many contraptions and gizmos you pack into those things." Carefully, trying to move the thief's leg as little as possible, he rolled the hem of the soot-stained dress pants up above his knee, and exhaled.

 

"Could be worse," he said finally. "Could be better, but could be worse. Looks like some broken or displaced bones in the foot, and definitely something in your lower leg. Some muscle or ligament damage too, hard to tell just by looking. We'll need to get you to a doctor for that as well as your head, it might not need surgery, but it'll definitely need to be set professionally if you want to be able to walk again." He'd almost forgotten about the two beat cops watching from the doorway, until one of them spoke.

 

"He's escaped from nineteen different prisons," Martín mused, his face alight with a grotesque mix of malice and wonder. "Led the police on quite a chase. D'you figure he'd be able run quite as fast if they had to amputate one of his feet?"

 

Zenigata was about to chastise him for the cruel, tasteless, joke - but then he caught the almost-thoughtful look Suarez was giving Martín, and the flicker of caged-animal fear, as unlikely as an arctic giraffe, that spasmed across Lupin's face. Without any conscious input from his higher intellect, his brain darted, flicker-fast, to the stories he'd heard as a rookie, of the bad old days, of prisoners tortured to death and witnesses dying in police custody and cronyism and zero accountability.

 

Something slimy and cold wrapped itself around the base of his spine, and there was a muted click as his perspective shifted.

 

Before, these had been cops. Foolish, narrow-minded hick-town cops, and it would be a disgrace to leave Lupin in their care while he went back to the bomb site, but still police officers, still his people. Now he saw just how deep that vein of bullying, willful ignorance ran, and it was ugly, like lifting the lid of a glossy oak casket to see the festering corpse inside. If he left Arséne Lupin the Third here, he'd come back to a dead thief and a couple of self-righteous officers, full of some cock-and-bull story of how they'd had to defend themselves from the dangerous convict.

 

"No chance of that," Zenigata said firmly, to the cops as much as to Lupin himself. _But if he couldn't leave the kid here, what could he do with him? He was an Interpol officer, one of the best, in a small town that had just been hit by a terrorist attack, he would do no damn good to anyone sitting here on his ass, babysitting a thief who couldn't even walk. If he left the kid here, the cops would persuade themselves that they were enacting justice, beating him to death for blowing up that building, but if he dragged the puking, limping Lupin along with him, the thief would be torn apart by the gathered, hysterical mob looking for someone to blame._ "Absolutely no amputation. It looks like broken bones and torn ligaments. Painful, certainly, and you won't be walking on it for a while, but it'll heal just fine."

 

Lupin closed his eyes, a shudder wracking through him. He still looked pretty green.

 

"Let's get your shirt off then," Zenigata prompted. "I want to make sure none of that shrapnel went too deep, can't have you bleeding out in custody." He didn't miss Suarez's eyes flicking towards Martín at that.

 

Lupin's torso was a checkerboard of purpling bruises, but Koichi was deeply relieved to see that there were only a handful of punctures along one side of his ribcage, probably from landing on broken glass or snapped rebar or something. Although they'd bled copiously, none of the gashes were deeper than an inch, and all but the largest, still sluggishly seeping red, had already scabbed over.

 

"We'll need to get those looked at too, but they aren't life-threatening right now. Looks like the concussion and the leg are the worst of it. You're amazingly lucky, thief," the inspector said quietly, helping him ease the shredded dress shirt back over his shoulders. "We probably can't find a doctor for you for a few hours yet, but as long as we can keep you awake and you stay off that foot, you should heal up just fine. Could've been far worse, after half a building fell on you."

 

Could've been much, much worse, but the damage he'd taken was bad enough. Zenigata wouldn't bet a cup of stale coffee on the kid's chances like this, dazed and barely conscious in the care of two corrupt cops who saw him as a terrorist, less than human, a threat. He couldn't leave the thief here, but he couldn't take him with, either. God, if only he had his team with him!

 

But that was the kicker, wasn't it? He was acting alone, had just happened to be within a hundred miles or so when he'd gotten the tip-off that Lupin and Jigen were going to make a play for the museum.

 

Ostensibly, he'd been on vacation, was in fact legally required to take one, though as his lieutenant had cracked, that mostly meant brooding on the beach instead of brooding in the office. He'd happened to be in Spain when he was informed that his steadily accruing vacation days needed to be used or he'd be formally ordered to take two weeks off. He'd toyed with the idea of going back to Japan, but in the end he'd just stayed where he was, glowering over very strong Turkish coffee and twitching to get back to work. And he'd gotten his wish, an informant surfacing with something too good to pass up.

 

After getting the tip, he'd taken the first train he could book a ticket on, didn't even have a car he could've locked the thief in, and with the explosion demanding every emergency vehicle that could be scrambled, there was precious little chance that he'd be able to move Lupin from here. He'd acted on his own initiative, and unfortunately, that did mean that he was alone in this, responsible for protecting an injured and barely coherent thief from a couple of angry and thoughtless officers who clearly hadn't heard the 'serve and protect' part of the oath they'd taken.

 

"Deserved worse, when he brought the building down in the first place," Suarez muttered under his breath, and Zenigata turned to glare at him.

 

"Habeas corpus," he snapped, feeling himself reaching the end of his patience. "Maybe he did blow up that building, but none of the evidence so far points to that, and I'll be damned if I let an innocent man take the fall for someone else's crimes. That isn't justice."

 

"Innocent!" Martín scoffed, and Lupin dropped his head to the table, making a soft, unhappy sound; whether pain or fear or annoyance, Zenigata couldn't have said, and he felt his frustration mount.

 

These men didn't seem to understand that justice had to be for everyone, the thief and the honest man alike, or it couldn't truly be called justice. There was no one above the law, not the police who enforced it or the president who wrote it into being. They did not get to interpret the laws they upheld, they merely saw them carried out, but these two wanted to be judge, jury, and executioner all in one.

 

Zenigata's nickname was the Tiger of Tokyo, but he'd never felt like too much of a tiger, feral and flashy. Truth be told, he'd always felt a bit like a bulldog, worrying away at a problem and growling at anyone who tried to take it from him. _Lupin_ was a tiger, wild and larger than life, and he simply couldn't be trusted around dutiful, law-bound society. His insatiable desire to tear everything apart to see how it worked, to turn safety and decency on its head just to make things more interesting, made him too dangerous to anyone who didn't fall in with his schemes. Zenigata couldn't let him run free. But that meant a _cage_ , not a _grave_. Feral tigers belonged in zoos, or safely on reserves, not slaughtered for trophies. They were rare creatures, as brilliant as they were dangerous, and to destroy one because you wanted a rug was an unforgivable crime. Especially when the tiger in question was shaking with pain, unable even to stand on his own.

 

This wasn't right, shooting a caged animal point-blank.

 

Lupin was as self-centered as a spinning top, egotistical and childish and indifferent to the ruin he left behind him. The man was the antithesis of everything Zenigata stood for. He was a fucking menace to society!

 

But...

 

...he wasn't actually dangerous. Not really. He carried a pistol, but he wasn't the kind to shoot first, resorted to violence only if he or his friends were in danger. He got his kicks from chaos and pratfalls and thumbing his nose at authority, not from bloodshed. Not from murder.

 

He couldn't be left to run around free. But he didn't deserve to die either, not without facing a fair trial and having the chance to account for his crimes.

 

Abruptly, intensely frustrated, Zenigata snapped at the two officers to keep an eye on Lupin and strode out the door, not missing the dread with which the thief watched him leave. He felt bad about it, leaving Lupin alone with those two, but he'd be two minutes only, one hundred seconds, just enough time to take a few deep breaths of air that didn't taste like humidity and stale cigarette smoke, enough time to compose himself. He couldn't help either of them until he could think straight.

 

Stepping out the battered front door of the tiny police station, he strode a few yards further, chest rising and falling rapidly as he fought to get his anger and aggravation back under control. Who could he call? Who could he possibly call, to get them both out of this one? Was it worth calling Interpol? They'd answer, the desk was manned 24/7, but he was supposed to be on vacation, hadn't told them he was setting off in pursuit. Would they be willing to back him in this? Probably, since he already had Lupin in custody, but they'd think that meant that they'd won, that there was no need to hurry, and the rest of those poor people trapped in the rubble needed his help _now_. Just like the thief needed his help _now_ , and would Interpol really prioritize getting him to a hospital? He couldn't sit here for eight hours, twiddling his thumbs and looking after a thief getting steadily more concussed and dehydrated!

 

And Jigen was still out here somewhere.

 

If Lupin was a tiger, flashy and larger than life, Jigen was a panther, lurking in the shadows. But of the two, Zenigata figured, Jigen was by far the more dangerous. Lupin might have been a long-standing #1 on Interpol's most wanted list while Jigen barely ranked, but that was only because there was never, never enough evidence to tie Jigen to any of the kills. Not for nothing had he been one of the best hitmen of the age, before trading in assassinations for thievery and buddying around with Lupin. Tigers were all roar and flash and panache. You could see them coming, hell, they practically demanded an audience. Panthers, though, you'd never know they'd been eyeing you until you felt the fangs close on the soft flesh of your throat, or felt the Magnum slug shatter the plates of your skull.

 

So it was not too much of a surprise to feel a cold circle of steel press itself firmly against the base of his skull.

 

"Where's Lupin?" came the voice, two heartbeats later. "Is he still alive?"

 

"For now," Zenigata shot back, "although if you want it to stay that way, you should let me head back in."

 

There was silence, then Jigen asked, "Where's Lupin?" again. His words sounded strange, slightly slurred, as though he was parroting the phrase in a language he didn't understand. Keeping his movements slow and smooth, more out of courtesy than fear, the Interpol inspector turned around to face him.

 

Jigen's hat was tipped back farther than Zenigata had ever seen it, and that was the first surprise. "Lupin's alive, for now," the officer repeated, "although he's badly concussed and his foot's shattered in about as many ways as it can be and still be in one piece." He saw Jigen's eyes tracking his face, the odd tilt of the gunman's head, and it finally clicked. Jigen was reading his lips. The thief's partner was in far better shape than Lupin was, but he hadn't made it through the explosion quite unscathed. Zenigata had experienced it himself in the military, the ringing ears and disorienting dizziness following a concussive blast, but as long as Jigen didn't get himself caught in another explosion too quickly, his hearing should return within half a day or so.

 

"For now?" Jigen asked in the same slightly slurred voice, frowning and putting his pistol up. "How bad is he?"

 

"Well, we pulled half a building off him," Zenigata deadpanned, making sure not to over-enunciate and make Jigen's job harder. "He can't stop throwing up long enough to string a coherent sentence together. I'm far more worried about the two officers on desk duty tonight though. They're on the take, or I'm a monkey's uncle, and Lupin's too concussed even to be sarcastic, let alone defend himself."

 

"Shit," Jigen breathed. "How bad is it? Ransom? Extortion? I can probably pull together a few hundred thousand, if it's money they're after. Worth it to get out of here fast."

 

"I doubt they'll think that far ahead. They'll just kill him," Zenigata told the hitman bluntly. "They won't set out to, but once I'm not there to stop them, they won't be able to stop themselves hitting him and hurting him, and with the shape he's in and how keyed-up and angry they are after the bomb, it won't take them long to go much too far. Afterwards, they'll tell themselves that he deserved it for setting that bomb and killing those people, and they'll tell their superior officers that he was threatening them, or trying to escape, but they'll do it because it makes them feel tough, to hit him while he's too sick to fight back. And once he's dead they'll try to profiteer off it, see if they can collect a reward from one of the many, many people your partner has pissed off over the years."

 

Jigen took this in, looking as disgusted as Zenigata felt. "I'm gonna have to break him out," the ex-bodyguard warned the officer. "Can't leave him there, especially when they're trying to pin this on us." Zenigata took a moment to absorb this. Ordinarily, he'd be perfectly happy to see Jigen chained up right alongside Lupin, but this wasn't an ordinary night.

 

"Any chance of you letting me arrest you? It _would_ get you inside."

 

"Nope," Jigen told him flatly, and Zenigata exhaled. Ah well, at least he'd asked. Probably best, he couldn't reasonably bring in a prisoner carrying a Smith & Wesson and claim he 'forgot' to search him, and there was no way Jigen was handing him that gun willingly.

 

Although the ex-hitman still held the pistol, Zenigata wasn't particularly worried. He certainly wasn't fool enough to turn his back, but he knew, in a place deeper than thought, that Jigen wouldn't shoot him, likely wouldn't even touch him, unless Zenigata had his hand on the switch to kill them both. He'd hunted the pair for long enough to understand their peculiar code of honor, and to realize just how deep their loyalty ran. He did not feel like he owed them anything - they were criminals, and it was his job to catch criminals - but the level of professional courtesy was appreciated and reciprocated on both sides, and Martín and Suarez's blatant cruelty rankled at him. He supposed it was the part of him that had never quite left Japan.

 

More than that, it... it just wasn't how this game was played. This was his game of Capture of Flag, and Martín and Suarez had butted in with lead pipes and baseball bats. He did _not_ want them on his playing field, and he did not want Lupin left in their hands. Which left him with...

 

"Don't bother trying to get the shackles open," Zenigata said abruptly.  "They're new ones - not locked, they're screwed on, and it'd take you at least ten minutes and a hex-head bit to get them off. I'll see to it that he's not chained _to_ anything, except himself. There's a back gate from the cell block into the parking lot, I'll leave him in the cell nearest the end. Just wait ten to fifteen minutes until after I leave, the desk jockeys won't get their nerve up that quickly. Do _not_ kill them, or you'll never get any help from me again," he warned, realizing as he said it, with a horrible, icy sinking lurch, that this was the first but would not be the last time, that he'd have the thief in custody and be forced to let him go to prevent worse, the circumstances spiraling around both of them forcing him to open the cuffs and let him walk.

 

"Oh, and keep him awake for the next few hours, no telling with a concussion that bad. Pretty sure he fractured his skull, but you'd need a CAT scan to be sure." Zenigata managed to stop himself from adding anything else. There was plenty of information online about taking care of concussion victims, if Jigen didn't know it already, and it wasn't his job to babysit the pair of them.

 

Jigen nodded, satisfied, giving him a look that was entirely too conspiratorial for the cop's liking.

 

"Don't think I'm going soft on you," he warned. "If I could trust the two of them to keep him awake and keep him from getting brain damage - hell, even just not to shoot him as soon as my back was turned - I'd be happy to see him rot in there, and you could go to hell."

 

"You're a good man, Zenigata."

 

The inspector laughed, sharp and humorless, although he knew Jigen couldn't hear him.

 

"And you two are a couple of lowlife thieves and mercenaries," he sneered. "But I'll still take that over the kind of corrupt, cowardly scumbags who'd shoot a man while he's down and pretend to be heroes for it."

 

Jigen half-smiled, didn't argue his words, then cocked his head as a new thought occurred to him.

 

"I don't s'pose you happen to know where the fuse box is?"

 

Zenigata _did_ know, but... "Not a chance," he decided abruptly. "I've already given you plenty, you can get him out on that." And turning on his heel, he headed back into the station, already dreading what he'd find.

 

He made it back to the concrete cube of the interrogation room in time to see Martín deck the thief across the face, Suarez hovering in the doorway, trying and failing to stand guard.

 

"Any reason I shouldn't book you for abusing a prisoner?" he snapped, making them both jump. Lupin's close-cropped hair was too short to fist, so Martín was gripping the back of his head, ignoring the way the thief's face was screwed up in pain. The Interpol inspector silently noted the flush and beading sweat across his skin. Probably running a temperature. Not a direct symptom of the concussion, but easily brought on by the dizziness and vomiting, certainly not helped by further head injuries. Best thing for him right now would be to lie down for a while, and to ice that leg until he could get it set professionally.

 

"He puked on my shoes!" Martín  snapped, and Zenigata rolled his eyes.

 

"I'm sure it wasn't delib..." Well, it might have been deliberate. Hard to tell with Lupin, the man gloried in being just as obnoxious as he possibly could be. "Deliberate or not, I hardly think any more head trauma will help the matter." Zenigata leveled a granite-faced stare at the petty officer until he finally broke and stepped away, snarling, letting the prisoner's head drop back to the steel table with a soft thunk. Lupin didn't even try to move, just kept his eyes screwed shut and clutched the table like it was all that was keeping him anchored.

 

"I'd apologize, usually," he finally gritted out, "but you...you can go straight to hell."

 

_Dammit, kid, stop poking the wolves already. You just have to make it another half-hour._

"That's enough!" the inspector barked, in his most authoritative _I am in charge here and you continue to draw breath only because I allow it_ voice. Martín, who had taken a threatening step forward, stopped, his face sullen.

 

"Excellent," Zenigata said softly. "Now bring him along, please. I need to get back to the Museo, so I'm putting him in the holding cells until I can process him properly."

 

"Vaffanculo fode-te," Lupin groaned, as Suarez hesitantly grabbed one manacled arm, pulling him, shaking, to his feet. "Anda tomar por culo. Fuck. _You_."

 

Zenigata took the lead, trying not to let his shock register on his features as he paced down the cell block, making a show of selecting which cell he wanted his capture stowed away in. He'd never actually heard Lupin snap at a cop before. He'd occasionally been roughed up in custody before - Zenigata had seen the bruises - but he always treated the whole thing as a joke, or a game, cracking puns and showing off and usually getting most of the arresting officers laughing and joking right alongside him. This loss of levity was a clearer signal than anything else could have been, warning that the kid was reaching the absolute end of his tether.

 

"This one."

 

The two officers steered the thief inside the concrete holding cell, dumping him on the fold-down steel bench with a little more force than strictly necessary. Martín made it a point to kick his bad leg on the way out, and Lupin hissed. Zenigata watched, impassive. It was spiteful and unnecessary, but as long as they didn't actually harm him any farther, he would just have to deal with the pain until Jigen showed up.

 

The inspector waited until the two officers were out of the cell before stepping forward, his cell phone in his hand.

 

"Smile, thief."

 

Lupin glanced up, haggard and startled, and Zenigata snapped a photo. Ignoring the kid's "Seriously!?" and making sure that the Suarez and Martín could see him, he made a show of saving the file.

 

"I'll be back in three hours," he warned them, phone in hand. "If I pull that picture up and find even one more scratch on the prisoner than I left him with, you'll both be on probation faster than you can say, 'wasn't me.'"

 

It was a paper shield only, but it might buy him some time until Jigen made it in.

 

"Pretty sure the Geneva convention was meant to cover shit like this," Lupin muttered, dry-heaving again.

 

"Don't stray too far, kid," Zenigata told him, slamming the cell door home. "You'll be out of here before you know it."

 

Lupin was too miserable even to snark back, just hunched farther in on himself, trying to disappear. He was somehow still clutching the garbage can in his manacled hands.

 

The next order of business was to cross all Ts and make sure every i had its dot. With that in mind, he punched up the number for the Interpol headquarters, deliberately turning his back on the cell.

 

He'd rather turn the thief loose than see him destroyed, but still, it rankled him badly, knowing how close he'd been. If he'd just had his team here...

 

For just a moment, he allowed himself the fantasy. Lupin would be in the back of an armored car on the way to a hospital, chained to everything they could wrap the manacles around and accompanied by two guards. His lieutenant would have been scrambling ambulances and fire trucks while he collared the thief, and they would join the rest of the emergency response team, securing the bomb site and triaging the victims. After a few days, when Lupin's leg had been set and he'd gotten a CAT scan and a few cognitive tests and he was back to his usual infuriating self, Zenigata would be able to visit him in the hospital to gloat and properly enjoy it, and they'd banter as they usually did. Then, when the doctors had given him the all-clear, he'd be booked and transferred to prison, and hell, with his leg in that bad a shape, he might've even stayed there for a few weeks this time. And since he was dreaming anyway, sure, why not, they'd caught Jigen too and he'd decided not take off without Lupin in a country where he didn't speak the language, so both of them would be in prison until the cast came off and they could cause some commotion and waltz off together. Six, maybe even seven weeks of peace, to pursue other cases and sleep easy. Now _that_ would be a good vacation.

 

Then HQ picked up, and, with a sigh, he turned back to the situation at hand.

 

It took only a few minutes to fill his commanding officers in: on the attack, the building's collapse, Lupin's capture and his condition, the chaos Zenigata had left behind when he took the thief to the station.

 

"So I'm going back to the site of the attack," he finished. "This is a small town, completely unprepared for anything of this scale, and I can be of help there. I'm leaving Lupin in the custody of Officers Martín and Suarez in the meantime."

 

"It's not ideal," the bureaucrat at the other end of the line sighed. "You're not even on duty..."

 

"With all due respect, ma'am," Zenigata insisted, "terrorists don't wait for Interpol's convenience, and I can't sit by when I could do some good."

 

"If you must," she conceded after a long silence. "Just make sure the two you're leaving Lupin with know what they're up against. We don't need dead officers and bad publicity."

 

"I'll warn them of the danger," Zenigata said solemnly, turning away from the phone to the two idiots, soaking up every word and not even trying to look as though they hadn't been eavesdropping. "And yes, it is a risk. Jigen is still out there," Zenigata warned them, making sure the Interpol headquarters was still on the line, couldn't help overhearing. "He's even more dangerous than Lupin. Be on your guard. The smartest thing to do would be to bar one entrance entirely, and stay well back from the other, keep it well-guarded." That wouldn't stop Jigen by any means, but it might buy them a fighting chance.

 

 _Make it a fair hunt. Warn the quarry, let them prepare_.

 

Then the two beat cops cast amused, _can you believe this guy?_ glances at each other, and he knew their fate was sealed. They had seen one celebrity already tonight, the infamous Lupin III, reduced to a shaking, puking mess in their holding cells, the glamour stripped away. What was Jigen to that? He wasn't a Name like Lupin was, so how bad could he possibly be?

 

 _It's a wise hawk that hides its talons_. Jigen wasn't a showboat the way Lupin was, but he didn't need to be. Zenigata had been honest with him, about what the two officers would do to Lupin if they thought they could get away with it, and Jigen was not one to forgive easily. These were two plump rabbits, laughing away the warnings that the big bad wolf was on the warpath.

 

"We'll handle it," Suarez smirked, " _Pops_." Zenigata raised a single bushy eyebrow.

 

"See that you do," was all he said, finally disconnecting the line and stowing the phone in his pocket. He stepped out into the darkness, not missing the warning prickle dancing on the back of his neck and crackling along his sideburns, that something predatory and angry had seen him leave and the countdown had begun.

 

 _Twenty minutes, thirty tops, and they'll both be safely away in that stupid little Fiat._ The inspector bit back a snort. Only Arséne Lupin would think that absurd little car could actually pass as incognito. Although considering the SSK was his usual mode of transportation, roaring around stealing tiaras and state secrets in one of the rarest cars in the world...

 

 _The man wouldn't recognize subtlety,_ Zenigata decided, cramming his fedora back onto his head, _if it stole his tacky green coat and bit him in the ass on the way out._ He bit back a smile at that thought. Good thing the kid had Jigen looking out for him. The gunman could usually be trusted to keep a good head on his shoulders.

 

As he came on the bomb site, taking in the full extent of the damage and already mentally cataloguing leads to follow up on, the thought occurred to him: he had just released a wild tiger back into a populated area.

 

...but this tiger was no killer, and besides - Zenigata smiled faintly - he'd gotten pretty good at hunting. It might be a few more years, he decided, joining the rescue team extricating crying and shell-shocked victims from the disemboweled innards of the building, and it would be an infuriating and frustrating safari, but he had no doubt he'd get his trophy eventually. He could wait.

 

**************

 

Within twelve hours, a religious extremist group bordering on a cult had stepped forward, claiming responsibility for the bombing and authenticating that claim with several details about the chemical makeup of the IED. Thanks to Zenigata's quick work, several members of the cult were arrested when they returned to the hardware store in which they'd purchased the bomb-making supplies. It was quickly forgotten, by most, that Lupin had been present at all.

 

An ambulance was called, anonymously and with great insistence, approximately five minutes before one man walked into the police station, and it arrived about four minutes after two men had walked out. One of the officers on duty that night got away with a shattered kneecap, and after physical therapy, he did manage to walk again, albeit with a cane. The other one wasn't so lucky, and took two bullets through the lungs. Although the ambulance crew arrived in time to save his life, the injury never really healed properly, and if he exerted himself at all, the scar tissue seized up and he would double over, fighting back a panic attack and struggling for breath. Although they were not fired, both of them were put on several months of unpaid leave after a handful of photos were leaked to the press, of them striking a shackled prisoner whose face was obscured.

 

Zenigata's superior officers reprimanded him, privately, for leaving Lupin in the care of two amateur beat cops who had allowed him to escape. He held his ground, pointing out that his presence at the blast site had helped keep order and saved lives, and that he had reported his actions beforehand. After several favorable articles about the off-duty hero cop who had jumped into the fray and helped pull injured civilians from the burning rubble made it to the front page, they had no choice but to back down, and he was publicly commended for his bravery.

 

Lupin announced his recovery half a dozen weeks later by showing up at the Ascot opening races astride the favorite to win, a magnificent sorrel horse named Silver Blaze. No one realized he had replaced the usual jockey until he'd crossed the finish line, well in the lead, and galloped off the track, laughing maniacally, with several dozen of his calling cards swirling in his wake. If he was wearing a walking cast that covered his right leg from the shin down, he'd done a good job of hiding it under the riding pants, and no one noticed until after. The horse was never recovered, although a few weeks later, a small stable in the countryside near Lourdes accepted a glossy copper-colored stallion named Great Escape as a new boarder. The horse was owned by a tall and rather weatherbeaten man who kept his fedora over his eyes, and if the stablehands thought this was odd, well, he was polite to the staff and he always paid on time. His visits tended to be unpredictable, but he seemed genuinely fond of the horse, and if he was in the area, he'd spend hours riding the trails of the nearby national park.

 

In early July, Inspector Koichi Zenigata found several bottles of very, _very_ nice whiskey left on his doorstep, with a scribbled note reading, _Thanks, Pops!_ in chickenscratch kanji. A few days of research determined that the bottles had been stolen from a wealthy and disreputable family in the north of Ireland, the Fowls, who had almost certainly stolen the liquor themselves a few generations back. Zenigata sat and stared at the box of fancy booze for close to an hour, his chin on his folded hands. Then, after cursing creatively, he called Fowl Manor to inform them that he'd managed to recover some stolen property of theirs.

 

The religious cult continued their depredations. It seemed not a week went by that they didn't claim responsibility for the destruction of a theater, museum, or historic landmark, and Interpol's pool of agents spent a lot of long nights following up on leads and collecting interviews.

 

In October, seven of the cult leaders were found, naked, hogtied, and fitted with snorkels, in the basin of a public fountain in Granada, Spain. It was later revealed that they had been snatched straight from the cult headquarters, and that same night, a great number of historically important illuminated manuscripts and golden sacramental paraphernalia had also gone missing. Four of the seven comprised the tip-top of Interpol's Most Wanted list, and their arrest and subsequent removal from the list propelled Arséne Lupin III right back to his accustomed place at the head of it. Zenigata had snorted into his coffee when that particular report had made its way across his desk. The little show-off.

 

A week before Christmas, Zenigata found himself stumbling over a crate of primo alcohol left on his landing yet again. Swearing under his breath, he dragged it inside, pulled out a bottle worth approximately his yearly salary, and fired up his computer.

 

On the 22nd of December, he finally snapped his laptop shut, amazement registering through the haze of exhaustion. He'd actually managed to find the shop the bottles of whiskey and sake had originated from, a very expensive little bottle haven in Finland run by an eccentric expert, and to his everlasting surprise, they had been purchased legitimately. The owner remembered the man who'd put in the order quite well, a distinctive-looking character with wide, dark blue eyes and a disarming smile. "Don't usually get many people ordering quite that quantity," he chuckled in a thin, reedy voice that put Zenigata in mind of summer evenings, "but he paid up front, was quite polite, wanted to know everything I could tell him about the different vintages and flavors, and picked out a few dozen that he thought sounded good. I could use customers like him more often, no quibbles about price or whining about some mythical vintage he heard about in a movie!"

 

Koichi thanked the man and hung up, a bottle of decades-old brandy held loosely on his lap and a slip of paper tucked between his knuckles. Glancing at the bottle, he felt his lips quirk into a faint smile. He didn't need to look at the note to remember what it said:

 

_So stealing from other thieves still doesn't cut it for you. Got it. These aren't a bribe, Pops, they're just a thank you. I know it was a one-time thing, but I do appreciate it. I know the honor of a thief isn't worth as much as the honor of a cop, but believe me, the honor is mine to have you as a pursuer. If you ever need anything, just call. I can't promise I won't tease you about it, but I will help if I can. Now seriously, go get drunk and get laid, I was assured there was enough liquor here to overcome even your hangups!_

_Here's to a fair hunt, and may the best man win!_

_Merry X-Mas_

"Merry Christmas, you smarmy little bastard," Zenigata chuckled, extracting the cork from the bottle of brandy. He took a long swig, feeling the delicious fire pour into his core, warming him from the inside out. Shit this good, he probably should have been using a crystal snifter or some such crap, but he was who he was, a tough, grizzled old cop playing a game of cat and mouse with a kid as brilliant as he was insane. Ah well. Could be worse. He got to travel to interesting places, meet new people. No day was ever boring; some days he felt like he was on the brink of having a heart attack, but at least when he got old, he'd have some damn good stories to tell.

 

It was a rough life, he decided, taking another long draught of the brandy, but it definitely had its compensations. His thumb crumpled the note against the smooth glass body of the bottle, and he smirked.

 

He wasn't talking about the booze.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm basing the descriptions of a concussion off the one I got when I was seven. I was being stupid, running by a hotel pool exactly the way you're warned not to, and I fell and fractured my skull. The best I can describe it is as a combination of having the flu and a really nasty hangover, both of them turned up to eleven. Before, I'd considered my body my super-mech, my armor and my vehicle to explore the universe around me. In the weeks after I fractured my skull, my body was a prison, keeping me confined in a single dark little box with way too much pain and no way to turn it off. I spent most of the first week laying down with a heavy towel over my head because even the smallest amount of light hurt too much, and I spent two full weeks all but barfing my lungs up. I made a full recovery, but it sucked. Would not recommend.
> 
> This isn't meant to be any particular series' Lupin, but since Castle of Cagliostro was what got me into this fandom, I have a particular soft spot for the green jacket. Figure this as part of Woman Called Fujiko Mine if you like, although I disliked the characterization of Zenigata in that one.
> 
> I started writing this shortly after getting into the Lupin III franchise, before I'd seen a whole lot of it, and by the time I found out Zenigata's nickname was the tiger of Tokyo, I was having too much fun with my 'Lupin as a tiger' metaphors to want to change it.
> 
> Lupin is bouncing between Spanish and Portuguese at the end there. All of it very rude.
> 
> If you did want to read this as Lupin/Zenigata...in Japan, Christmas IS supposed to be a sweethearts' holiday. ;)
> 
> 'The wise hawk hides its talons' is an old Japanese saying about not showing your hand if you don't need to. Boyfriend thought it applied best to Lupin - that he's so flashy and goofy, everyone is too busy laughing at him to take him seriously, right up until they're hogtied and he's waltzing out the door with whatever he set out to steal, plus whatever else was handy. I thought it applied best to Jigen, lurking in the shadows while Lupin courts the limelight, usually dangerous only if provoked, but a gun at the ready and not to be fucked with if you harbor hopes of staying alive. I suppose Boyfriend and I will have to agree to disagree.
> 
> The entirely fictional town is supposed to be somewhere in Spain near the Straits of Gibraltar, a little south of Granada. Given that Granada was historically very contested territory, with both Catholic and Muslim influence and a fuck-ton of really incredible art from both sides, it seemed a good spot to have Lupin and a bunch of religious nutjobs collide.
> 
> As much as I enjoy the Fiat, I have many headcanons about that SSK and Arséne Lupin the first. Maybe someday they'll make it into a fic.
> 
> Artemis Fowl and Arséne Lupin III would either get along like a house on fire, or promptly kill each other, and I'm not totally sure which.
> 
> Jigen definitely warned Lupin that riding a horse while recovering from a concussion and a broken leg was not a good idea. Lupin definitely didn't listen.
> 
> I love the idea of cowboy Jigen. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we ever got too much of a backstory for him, so I like to imagine he grew up in rural Texas before winding up in New York, Japan, and Europe, hanging out with the rest of the gang. Most iterations of him look slightly bow-legged, so I'm going to imagine he likes riding horses. You will pry that headcanon out of my cold dead hands.
> 
> Stolen sake and a plate of cookies to anyone who knows where Silver Blaze came from and why he's an appropriate addition! Other aliases considered for the horse included Close Call and Fair Game, none of which are the most ridiculous racehorse names I've heard.


End file.
